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How Contempt Divides America

AEI president discusses how to mend our political discourse

Arthur Brooks, president of AEI, spoke about how contempt divides the country and what we can do to fix it.

The United States is experiencing a “national crisis” because of extreme polarization, according to Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Brooks, an economist, a former professional musician, and the Beth and Ravenel Curry Scholar in Free Enterprise, delivered IPR’s Distinguished Public Policy Lecture on November 7 on Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus.

“I greatly admire the work that Arthur’s done at AEI,” said IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. “He has a deep commitment to serve others, especially those at the margins of society.”

Brooks believes that each of us can help to mend America’s political discourse by meeting contempt with warm-heartedness. There are three things each of us can do, he said, to become part of the solution.

First, he said, we each need to go out and make friends with someone we disagree with. He urged the audience to listen to each other and remember to be grateful.

Second, while social media is a place that breeds contempt, he encourages people to find the places of hate on Twitter and meet that contempt with warm-heartedness. In other words, respond to hateful social media comments with kindness rather than feeding negative comments with more negativity.

Third, Brooks advised the audience that they should refuse to be used by those in power who use contempt to their own benefit. Those in power using contemptuous rhetoric do so to divide the country, he said.

“We need to be a beacon of hope and light for the world,” Brooks said. “There are too many people in the world who need to be lifted up from the margins, and we have the capability to do great good. But we’re not going to do it if we’re not together.”